Plans to axe the only maternity unit in the borough with the third highest birthrate in London were today described as “madness”.

A group of GPs were this afternoon deciding whether to end births at Ealing hospital from next March, in the latest stage of a move to provide maternity services at six “super hospitals” in north and west London.

Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group, which controls the budget for maternity services, is considering whether to endorse the Shaping A Healthier Future masterplan for the NHS in north-west London.

The closure of the maternity unit would almost certainly be followed within three months with the removal of Ealing’s paediatric services and emergency and inpatient gynaecology. The hospital’s A&E department is also due to be downgraded at a later date.

Ealing council leader Julian Bell said: “It is madness to leave Ealing without a maternity unit when we have one of the highest increases in birthrate in London. The Prime Minister denied that this closure would happen, highlighting the recent £2 million investment in Ealing’s maternity unit. We will fight it every inch of the way.”

Dr Onkar Sahota, Labour chairman of the London Assembly health committee, said: “After the debacle of the A&E closures in north-west London and the London Ambulance Service at breaking point this is not the time to be closing services. All this will do is to place further pressure on hospitals which are already struggling to cope.”

The Shaping A Healthier Future report says a shortage of consultant cover at Ealing means expectant mothers do not receive the same quality of care as at neighbouring hospitals. This means there is an “increasing risk that services will become unsafe”.

In April, the Care Quality Commission watchdog found that maternity staff at Ealing, where 2,884 births were recorded in 2012/13, were not always following guidelines on counting needles and swabs, placing women at risk after delivery. In February last year a swab was left inside a mother.